Friday, February 06, 2009

Entire Major Cities & States Unemployed

It's hard to get our minds around certain statistics like today's announcement that 598,000 (let's just say 600,000 can we?) jobs were lost just last month. This shows definitively that the horrific job loss trend is indeed accelerating. (Every American should be pressuring their congress-critters to pass a stimulus bill asap - it's already past due.)

To put this in perspective, it is as if the following entire major cities were put out of work just last month:

U.S. Cities with Populations around 600,000:

Boston

El Paso

Milwaukee

Seattle

Nashville

Denver

Washington, D.C.

The following cities have far fewer than 600,000 people. Last month's job losses alone would have eliminated more than one job for every person in the following cities:

Las Vegas

Louisville

Portland, OR

Atlanta

Sacramento

Kansas City

Cleveland

Miami

Omaha

Oakland

Minneapolis

Raleigh

Arlington, TX

St. Louis

Tampa

Cincinnati

Pittsburgh

Newark

Plano, TX

New Orleans

Orlando

Obviously this is not an exhaustive list, and remember that city populations include children, the retired, and others not in the workforce.

There have been over 2 million jobs lost in the last three months.

There are only four U.S. cities with populations greater than 2 million:

Houston (2.2 M)

Chicago (2.8 M)

Los Angeles (3.8 M)

New York (8.2 M)

There are only fifteen U.S. states with populations over 2 million.

And there are 26 -- yes, twenty six -- U.S. states with populations less than 600,000 - the number of jobs lost in the U.S. just last month.

We are not having an academic or ideological discussion in this country about the imminent need for stimulus.